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Resizing fashion for ‘men of modest height’

If there is such a glut of clothing on the market, why does so little of it fit actual humans?

In this age of big data, it is hard to imagine an industry that would ignore a full third of potential customers. Yet that is exactly what the fashion world is doing with men whose height falls under the industry “standard” of 5-foot-8.

Two professors at the Ryerson University School of Fashion, Henry Navarro and Osmud Rahman, who both identify as “men of modest height,” a term that originated with blogger Brok McGoff, found themselves chatting around the water cooler five years ago about how impossible it was for them to find clothes.

As fashion insiders with mad tailoring skills, they were able to make their own garments or tweak their ready-to-wear finds, but what about the rest of the men in North America, 33 per cent of whom are under 5-foot-8? They poked around the academic literature and found there was almost nothing being studied or written about a market that is seriously underserved.

They had found their mission. For the past year, they’ve been studying height inclusion for men, starting with an online platform, sastrocircle.com. Navarro and Rahman use the site as a forum to gather opinions, shopping experiences and social perspectives form men in the target market on their fashion frustrations. The site is also a place to sign up volunteers for 3D body scans. The eventual goal is to develop a whole new sizing system for the industry, and to spark interest and action from fashion retailers to fill the niche.

The giant opportunity in the market for men under 5-foot-8 is similar to one in the curve market in womenswear. Formerly known as plus-sized, curve is the word preferred by body positivity advocates and has taken off through its embrace on social media.

Thoughtful wording is important, as the change in name has coincided with concrete improvements: curve women (67 per cent of the female population), were underserved in fashionable offerings for years. But that market has recently seen concrete improvements, with fast-fashion megabrands such as Joe Fresh extending their sizing in response to demand. The word “short” can also be seen as loaded and pejorative, say Navarro and Rahman, but in contrast “men of modest height” has an elegance to it.

“It is a lot more empowering,” Navarro says. “People are responding to it.” The next step is to follow the curve movement and spread the word.

The women’s petite-size market is also huge — some 50 per cent of women are under 5-foot-4 — and while there are both specialty retailers and petite departments in chains such as J.Crew, Ann Taylor and Banana Republic, the options are still limited. But for men (and trans men) who don’t fit into the standard size ranges, there is often no choice but children’s wear departments, or (expensive) custom tailoring.

“Children’s clothes are not designed for adults,” Navarro says. “There are issues with functionality, proportion size, kid’s skeletal structure is not same. But more importantly, shopping in the kid’s section is really detrimental to sense of self.”

Jill Andrew and Aisha Fairclough are the co-founders of Body Confidence Canada. BCC’s national campaign #SizeismSUCKS is also petitioning to have size and appearance (including height) added to the Canadian human rights code as prohibited grounds for discrimination.

“Phrases like ‘tall, dark and handsome,’ which originated in the early 19th century and continue to thrive today, help perpetuate the idea of more height for men as desirable, powerful and therefore fashionable,” say the pair in an email. “We can’t lose sight of just how connected our fashion culture and even our everyday conversations are. One can be short, dark and handsome and just as alluring.”

And, they add, there are emotional consequences to exclusion. “Male consumers who don’t fit the so-called ‘ideal body’ aren’t immune to the emotional frustrations of being sized out of the fashion market. Your clothing is your social skin, it’s the first impression people often make of you. When you’re unable to put your best ‘skin’ forward it’s got an incredible impact on your confidence, how you move through your world and how others ‘see’ you. All bodies should be able to equally participate in the fashion arena. We shouldn’t have to be short dressing taller or fat dressing thinner. We should be able to dress the body we have today.”

It is not just a matter of sizing down, Navarro says, it is about proportional fit, and that takes a whole new set of patterns. “There is a need in almost any type of clothing, from swim, to under, outer, shoes, ties, belts. There are no cool clothes that are affordable for this population.”

“You get a tremendous amount of data from 3D scanning,” he says. As they unfold (and procure funding for) later phases of the study, the goal would be to scan some 2,000 participants to begin the work of a new proportional sizing system. “I can scan a person in 12 seconds, with accuracy and level of detail far beyond any well-trained tailor.” It also shows how very unique we all are.

Marilyn McNeil-Morin is director of George Brown’s Fashion Exchange. She is also a fit expert, and participated recently in the Men’s Height Inclusion Panel organized by Navarro and Rahman at Ryerson.

“Fit in general has dropped off as have quality standards, ignored in a time of casualwear and a lot of knits,” she says. “We used to accommodate different body shapes, back when clothes were made for a specific person.”

As we find new value again in quality clothing that lasts, she says, will see an overall embrace of good fit.

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Fashion trends play a part in the problem. “In the unstructured menswear trends of the ’90s,” Navarro says, “the fit problem was less apparent. But with the return to structured, tailored garments, poor fit for shorter men is much more apparent today.”

McNeil-Morin says Canada’s demographics are also a factor. “People come here from all over the world, and we need wider diversity in size ranges as a result,” McNeil-Morin says. “When a garment is comfortable, it doesn’t ride up or turn around, we don’t have to keep pulling on it. There are no pulls or stretches, or wrinkles that point to the part of the body where it doesn’t fit.” And if it fits, we keep it around.

After waves of focus on first globalization and then sustainability, diversity is the new pillar of academic interest. Navarro says it began around 2011, and “was embedded as a guiding principal in the fashion school around 2013.” He believes that if you have students working on underserved populations, plus, petite, pregnant, “a big rainbow of diversity,” then industry will, eventually, follow.

“We have money to spend, and we want cool clothes too.”

Clothing options for men of modest height

One to watch: Fashion start-up 7 Heads & Half is working with the Height Inclusion Study, and is set to launch this spring. The founders have been active on Sastro Circle and in panel discussions, and are keen to continue to stay in the feedback loop with Sastro Circle as clothing production begins.

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